31 May 2016 Events

Landa's roll out begins

Landa names beta users plus 20 machines going into Cimpress.

Landa Digital Printing has named the first beta users of its nanographic presses, announced the sale of 20 machines to Cimpress and a new partnership with QuadGraphics. The latter is to develop machines suitable for short run magazines and journals and has already resulted in a new product to its line up.

This is the Landa W10P, a twin-engined web press running at 200m/minute. It is not part of the Drupa display, which once again centres on a dynamic presentation by the company's founder Benny Landa. "This is equivalent to 17,000 B1 images an hour," he says, "or 2 million pages in an eight-hour shift.

"Four years ago we showed nano prototypes. Today we have a full range of industrially engineered presses running at offset speeds with the lowest print cost in the industry." Just what that cost is and how it is calculated is not public.

Nor are the beta customers likely to be more forthcoming. The first three named are Imagine, a leading producer of POP material in the US which is taking an S10 single-sided machine, Colordruck Baiersbronn, a German carton printer which is creating a 3,000m2 plant around the S10, and Elanders which is installing an S10P.

These installations will be followed by 20 machines for Cimpress which has production facilities in Canada, Holland, Italy and the UK, though is not saying where its first machines will be headed. "It is the biggest deal for digital Presses that has ever happened," says Landa CEO Yishai Amir. The capability of the presses fits with the Cimpress mass customisation Vision for printing,

Elanders is also thinking long term. It will install the S10P at its digital print plant in southern Germany where there are already two HP PageWide inkjet web presses and HP Indigo machines installed over many years. It will receive the press early next year. Chief executive Peter Sommer says: "We have had good success with inkjet, but we have to make compromises on price to sell that quality, so there is a limit to inkjet.

"We see the opportunities for Landa from packaging and photo and a wide range of commercial work. The challenge is to integrate that sheetfed technology with the Indigo and into the post press workflow."

In the longer term, Elanders is shifting its volume print business to plants in Central Europe, leaving plants in Sweden and the UK which are close to customers to invest in digital, including perhaps Landa digital. At Drupa further investment in HP Indigo technology is also on the cards.

The major shareholder of the Altana group is Susanne Klatten, who is also the major shareholder of BMW. Elanders has a long term relationship with German car manufacturing, including BMW. "Perhaps we can print more for them now," he says.